domain:gurwinder.substack.com
ABigGuy4U
5hr ago
It makes the doom possible but does nothing to bring the doom about in and of itself.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5hr ago
Astartes was universally beloved though, it's the platinum standard for 40K fanworks. The guy who made it was clearly super talented but it proves that it can be done. 'Show don't tell' is great!
I think you could have a film with a nailbiting, dialogue-free action finale between drone operators. Or maybe they do psy-ops to taunt eachother with pre-recorded messages on their drones? If you can send a signal from your person to the drone, you could send a message too. Occasionally there are these scenes where soldiers bait drones to attack and then dodge. Or that Bradley-BTR duel from the other day, these crazy moments are rare but do happen.
Tanya the evil novels were fun, I liked all the autistic stuff they put in about how Russian air defences were so shit a random Finn landed a light aircraft in Moscow, so they could do a deep strike there and get away with it.
FD4280
5hr ago
The novels behind LoGH were quite good too. I think the English translations were released a few years ago.
Mottizen
5hr ago
Yeah the Aboriginal statistics are pretty inherently tainted by the amount of 1/16th suburban Sydneysiders who get meshed in with the residents of Meekatharra. I did a year in Darwin and until you've been out there it's hard to really understand what the situation on the ground is like with the remote populations.
Mottizen
5hr ago
would they have been treated as full community members had they stayed, or would they have been discriminated against?
IIRC this was part of the justification for removing them from the communities after some bad headlines around treatment of half-caste children
YE_GUILTY
5hr ago
A recent example I'm thinking of is Frieren, where - minor spoilers - it turned out that the demons actually were bad. That is, the story didn't follow the "what if the bad guys were actually good and the good guys were actually bad" subversion seen in, for example, every single webcomic that ever included an orc and/or goblin: instead of being different-looking people wrongly oppressed for looking different by the retrograde powers-that-be, they are actually inhuman predators who exploit the former mode of thinking.
On some more-progressive corners of the internet (I saw kerfuffles in threads on RPG.net and SomethingAwful) this made (a minority of) people upset for being a racist idea. Racist against what group, exactly? Well, it wasn't that: it was just that the idea of irreconcilable differences existing between groups that could (apparently) communicate with each other was too dangerous to be entertained at all.
I think that betrayed a weakness of faith in anti-racism on the part of the people who said that. Frieren demons are clearly unlike any real-world humans, and thus their example should be a positive thought-experiment for coexistence in our world. One thing I like about fantasy and science fiction and so forth is its utility as a lens upon our own world: it lets us consider what things would be like if something we believe is true were different. What would things look like then? If they're necessarily obviously different, then perhaps your beliefs have stood the test. If the result seems more like reality than your understanding of the real world does - then perhaps you've learned something, too.
Rov_Scam
5hr ago
In Pittsburgh, sidewalk maintenance is the responsibility of the adjoining homeowner. The city isn't going to get on you for a crappy sidewalk unless it's hazardous to the point of a code violation, and maybe not even then unless a lot of people are complaining. The image I posted is from a low income area, and the suburban style houses were built in the 70s when the neighborhood was going downhill fast as an attempt to stabilize it. There's a good chance that these homes are owned by elderly black people who simply can't afford cosmetic sidewalk improvements, especially considering that sidewalks are often bad in much nicer areas. The ones on the opposite side of the street were probably redone when the houses were built a few years back, whereas there's a good chance that the suburban side hasn't been touched since those houses were built decades ago.
anon_
5hr ago
Getting trapped into promising federal / congressional restrictions would be a big mistake and highly unpopular.
Among the general populace, yes.
But getting into the White House or, worse yet, doing so and having the House and the Senate, and then doing nothing would disillusion a huge part of the base.
No win.
edmund-nelson
5hr ago
I can imagine certain types of shows working with those sorts of premises, but the key there is there would be no dialog between our pro/antagonists except before and after action sequences. So our cyberpunk drone operator sequence would be cool but it would have to be a thing where all the talking happens by characters that aren't our drone operators, maybe observers in a meeting room or something.Can't have them communicate via comms since that would cause them to get caught by the other operator.
The only other example I know of is The fan animation astartes which you know isn't even a real show. Reading /r/combatfootage sort of shows just how hard it is to even come close to making modern weapons interesting storytelling, you walk around in a trench and then boom an artillery round killed you. No drama between you and the antagonist, just nothing nothing nothing dead.
As for the saga of Tanya the Evil, it's a decently popular show, but definitely not some major franchise like the MCU or something. The author of the novels is clearly some guy who played a lot of Hearts of Iron 4 and also clearly read a lot of World war history novels before making the original books. Unlike live action, the animation actually can make explosions ect that "look" real because in spite of the cartoons not being real this means the stupid cartoon can have the bullet actually go through the persons head. According to imdb it's probably about in the top 15% of shows ratings wise. Now I will admit the show really does use rational tactics for the mages, having them provide cover fire, spot for artillery and engage in aerial bombardments, even though it's a show about magical girls. (heck one of the main villains is called Mary Sue :D) But it's a major exception, and one I'm a big fan of.
That's a good point. I doubt Trump ever did the old "baby I love you, but I need you to get this abortion because I can't leave my wife for you just yet. Come on, it's for us!"
More like "you and I both know it's 1-in-10 I'm the father, how's that paternity suit going to work out for you?"
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
5hr ago
The ruling class only are so because they are willing to organize against everyone else. It is always thus. The day they stop is the day they get supplanted by another minority who is willing to grasp power.
It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
Mewis
6hr ago
The question is, I think, a little bit misleading, because humans don't live in a vacuum - they have real desires and needs that require other humans, or some kind of human society, to meet. That's the real challenge, not questions of human worth so far abstracted away from the actual problems we face as to be irrelevant.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
6hr ago
You're skipping over the fact that they were engaging in ethnic cleansing in eastern Ukraine before the conflict heated up.
I have no doubts people like that would be persecuting Russian speakers using typical natsoc tactics if given power, and that's a far cry from standard nationalism. The other parties you cite didn't do that and don't have large paramilitary forces.
People don't want to contemplate this because Putin uses it to justify his geopolitical moves, but it was still a real thing.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6hr ago
So is that like a Quest thread on spacebattles or something, audience voting on what comes next?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
6hr ago
You, the invoker of IQ, need to prove the numbers work as numbers and aren't better being left as philosophical concepts or practical examples, or point to something well established that does.
Lewis Terman (of Stanford-Binet fame) and his many successors (and predecessors) have done that. IQ isn't some crank idea.
The simple, self-evident fact that IQ is fit to a normal curve and you yourself don't seem to believe that a symmetric 15 point gap is equal across the domain is in and of itself a tacit admission that IQ is the wrong tool.
The reason for this belief was explained; you've ignored the explanation. If you're just e.g. having casual conversation with someone, you may well not be able to detect someone at 100 from someone at 115, but could detect someone at 100 from someone at 85. This does not at all mean there's something unequal about IQ. It just means such casual conversation is not particularly intellectually taxing. The symmetry you claim must exist is not, in fact, a requirement.
As for "nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio", the Wikipedia page on that actually cites IQ as an example of an ordinal measurement, though I am not sure Terman would agree.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6hr ago
If you were a skilled artist, surely you could make such a film entertaining. Imagine a band of heroic scouts discovering some deception operation, that the enemy was trying to outflank them or that a seemingly huge army was actually just balloons and dummies. What about a duel between cyberpunk drone operators, scrabbling around a ruined megacity as their drones hunt eachother's weak flesh and blood body? That's just extending what we see in Ukraine a few steps.
What about using clever tactics to get around superior firepower by fighting in close quarters? Or basic things like fire and manoeuvre, characters working together?
Tanya the Evil was well-liked IIRC.
EverythingIsFine
6hr ago
One total aside that I cannot cast out of my brain is how much sidewalk quality seems to set the vibe for a neighborhood. Why does the suburban crap side look so much worse than the other newer side? Is it simply newness? Do sidewalks simply need to be replaced after a certain period of time, or repaired, or can grass growing up through cracks in the sidewalk be prevented easily by design or maintenance or is it a losing battle? Does type of concrete matter to avoid the curb crumbling away, or is that also inevitable? Does the fact that the new side planted trees in tiny little cutouts mean that in 20-30 years the sidewalk will be broken up and destroyed by roots?
Another side note: these are awesome. I wish patios hadn't disappeared in so many parts of the country and construction styles.
EverythingIsFine
7hr ago
Simply using IQ necessitates that you grapple with these things. That's the nature of using numbers to describe something human. You, the invoker of IQ, need to prove the numbers work as numbers and aren't better being left as philosophical concepts or practical examples, or point to something well established that does. The simple, self-evident fact that IQ is fit to a normal curve and you yourself don't seem to believe that a symmetric 15 point gap is equal across the domain is in and of itself a tacit admission that IQ is the wrong tool. Are you familiar with the statistical notions of how an assigned number scale can be nominal, or ordinal, or interval, or ratio? It's not a perfect paradigm by any means, but it's one you must grapple with at least on some level, and happens to be incredibly relevant here in this case. See also OP's initial claim that the distribution has a weird asymmetric tail, also evidence (though more mild) against using IQ as the correct tool. Similarly, the fact that you dodge the 100-center question, which is a fundamentally important question to the use of IQ, is not acceptable.
I mean, I get the whole all models are wrong but some are useful, but these are just the very basics, the fundamentals, they are not nitpicks. An example of something that at least does attempt to address these issues and mostly succeeds is the Likert scale. You might be familiar with it. It's the classic 5 or 7 point scale in response to a question, with "strongly agree" and "slightly agree" and "not sure" and disagree options. There's a natural zero, and at least psychologists attempt to say that the distance between each point is "equal". I know forced normalization distorts this equal-distance formulation slightly, in terms of the math, but two properties that persist across the transformation are the aforementioned symmetry of responses, and also the center point of responses. These two decisions are non-negotiable and mandatory to make and cannot be hand-waved away. They are inherent to the math and the use of a numerical model.
Tanista
7hr ago
Anyone watching the new season of The Boys. Cause it feels...worse?
Like, the show was never really subtle. But it seems over the top now. I don't care about things like the Frenchie subplots already. But the show doesn't even seem to be able to keep a coherent continuity.
- Victoria Ocasio-Cortez is supposed to be deadset against Vought and Homelander. How can she be seen having even vaguely positive conversations with Homelander after what happened last season? Why is she at any Vought event at all?
- For that matter, how does she justify her opposition to muzzling supes giving her political positions? Are we just going to pretend they don't exist?
- "Schools that teach Critical Supe Theory"? When was this supposed to happen? The theme of the show has been Vought being in control of the super narrative for decades up until recently. Also: "Critical Supe Theory"? Fuck off.
- What's with this continuity breaking idea that all heroics are fake (raised by A-Train's brother)? Manipulated, yes. Used for Vought's gain? Sure. Not worth the cost in collateral? Probably not. But almost every supe thing we've seen mentioned involves choreography or lying.
TequilaMockingbird
7hr ago
Its a deep cut and i like it ;-)
Quantumfreakonomics
7hr ago
I think it's a mistake to consider the MCU to be porting in the global political situation as it actually exists. They use the same vocabulary because it is efficient from a storytelling perspective, but I thought it was clear that the "UN" in that movie was a stand-in for "political oversight, not otherwise specified".
A lot of the issues you are identifying are medium-specific. Cinema is very very effective at conveying emotional information about specific characters. It is less effective at communicating the intricacies of various philosophical viewpoints. Feature films have good guys and bad guys. That's the format that people expect to see when they pay money and walk into a theater.
To me, a much more satisfying conflict among good guys would be for good people to fight over complex issues and/or ideological divides, and do so rationally rather than emotionally.
I thought Oppenheimer did a pretty good job of this, but at the end of the day, audiences demand cinematic cues who to root for. Some people think Kitty Oppenheimer getting absolutely roasted on cross examination is an epic girlboss moment. It has to be because the music indicates that it is a heroic moment.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
Bullshit. The US having a mandatory death penalty for drug dealers is exactly as likely as a national abortion ban- they have the same precondition(total red tribe political victory). Lax enforcement leads to meaningfully more drug use. California set the taxes way too high, but there's black market cigarettes literally everywhere, and California also has a large pre-existing problem with just not enforcing the law. It's not like cracking down on the illegal sellers wouldn't drive people back to paying taxes on the shit.
EverythingIsFine
7hr ago
Point 1 is a good point. Personally my philosophy is that we should be looking for disparate treatment more independently of results, though I understand and suppose I agree that a more thorough and complete understanding of underlying facts and mechanisms could be helpful to figuring things out, at least in theory. Fundamentally I don't like dismissing arguments simply because many make them in bad faith, you can use a true thing to make a bad faith argument. Still, it certainly seems to be true that a good chunk (certainly not all) of the HBD stuff seems to just be Eugenics 2: Electric Boogaloo rather than "let's just follow the science". Not that this is unique to one particular political group, of course. So I guess overall, I think looking at disparate treatment alone and independently is often sufficient, so it doesn't necessarily follow that we need to do a deep dive into HBD theory stuff. I'm open to being wrong. Do you have some examples where it wouldn't be?
I mean there are parts of point 2 that are I think fairly self-evident, and you summarize it well, but I think you overlook that sometimes we actually have a vested interest in fairness even if outcomes are objectively worse. I think these cases are actually few and far-between, rather than super common -- I'm not naive enough to say that diversity is always a strength. I think it often has hidden benefits. I think that sometimes a desire for societal fairness and respect is greater than the need for some super-optimized result, if the cost is introducing a disproportionate amount of stereotyping.
Of course you do make a good point that the equation isn't always immutable. As I myself said in a longer comment just barely, gathering other, better information is really the best case. We don't allow companies to provide IQ tests, but some other forms of testing are allowed. I do think some of the restrictions need to be loosened on what's allowed for recruiters. Jobs are important enough that I think a lot of people in power aren't giving them the policy care and attention they need.
This is supposing that there are no other issues that they care about at all.
If two candidates are indistinguishable on some set of issues, the only way to decide for whom to vote would be to look at other issues.
More options
Context Copy link